Thursday, April 26, 2007

Green Party Members Say NO to an Electoral Coalition with the Liberals in St. Catharines

Looks like some Liberals were counting their chickens. Liberal bloggers were clearly unaware of what was happening on the ground. The Green Party rank-and-file in St. Catharines has clearly rebuked their former candidate who suggested making the no-candidate pact in the first place.

Here's an edited version of a story that appeared in the St. Catharines Standard a few days back:

No-candidate pact between Greens and Liberals in riding failsto hatch

GRANT LaFLECHE, Standard Staff

Looking back, it was all a hallucination.

For a moment, Jim Fannon thought it would be possible: don't run a Green Party St. Catharines candidate in the next federal election, and cut a deal with the local LiberalParty candidate to shut out Conservative incumbent Rick Dykstra.

It seemed like a sound strategy, except for one thing. Local Greens hated the idea."There has been a lot of feedback since I put the idea out there, on both sides of the issue, really," Fannon said Monday about a resolution he was planning to put before local Green members at a meeting next month. "But it is pretty clear it doesn't have a lot of support here."

...."So I don't think there is much point is putting forward a resolution that, at this point, is really going to get crushed," Fannon said. "The Green party is a grassroots party, and this is not something the grassroots wants."

After Fannon told The Standard last week about the resolution, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May - who struck a deal with Liberal Leader Stephane Dion not to run candidates in each other's ridings - said she would allow the riding to decide the issue, though she was not in favour of it. Local Green leaders also said they would not support the resolution, echoing May's desire to run candidates in as many ridings as possible.

"I don't want to call my resolution and the thinking behind it a hallucination because that implies drugs or something, but the fact is that is what it was," Fannon said.